More than £165m in emergency loans to some of the UK’s biggest arts and heritage organisations has been announced to ensure they survive the pandemic. The Royal Opera House will get £21.7m, the National Theatre £19.7m, the Royal Shakespeare Company £19.4m, the Royal Albert Hall £20.7m, the Southbank Centre £10.9m and English National Opera £8.5m. In total, 11 “nationally and internationally significant organisations” which provide work for more than 9,000 people will get the loans. Each will have an initial repayment holiday of up to four years, a low interest rate and a repayment term of up to 20 years. The loans are one of the final pieces of the jigsaw in the government’s £1.57bn cultural recovery fund to help a sector which has been one of the hardest hit by the pandemic. Lisa Burger, executive director of the National Theatre, said: “It is a vital lifeline that will form part of our recovery, helping to ensure that the National Theatre will be here for the nation, now and in the future. “The loan will enable us to invest in the freelance creative workforce to produce some of the world’s most exciting theatre.” The move was also welcomed by actor Olivia Colman, who last appeared there in 2017, in Lucy Kirkwood’s Mosquitoes. “Alongside the grants to smaller theatres, it’s wonderful to hear that the NT’s future is being supported by this lifeline loan,” she said. The National is reopening on 11 December with its panto Dick Whittington, which will be streamed for free over Christmas. It is also filming a new Romeo and Juliet for TV starring Jessie Buckley and Josh O’Connor. Elaine Bedell, chief executive of the Southbank Centre, said the organisation lost £25m of income this year. “This loan will help us stabilise our finances as we prepare to reopen all our venues safely next spring,” she said. “We still have challenges – but we can meet them now with creative optimism.” Edward Gardner, principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, said: “The Southbank Centre is an essential part of London’s artistic lifeblood. This support will help our mission to bring the most adventurous music making to the most people.” Alex Beard, chief executive of the Royal Opera House, said the money would help “address some of the immediate financial damage crisis caused by the crisis”. But none of the organisations see the loans as a panacea. Beard said the longterm impact of the crisis and the challenges of socially distanced performances meant “the road ahead is not smooth for our industry”. There would also be “restructuring and redundancy”. The other loans include £40m to Historic Royal Palaces, which looks after places such as the Tower of London and Hampton Court Palace. Its chief executive, John Barnes, said the loan was a great relief. “As a self-funding charity dependent on visitor income, our finances have been decimated by the pandemic,” he said. “The scale of the losses we have faced has been so significant that, at times, the future of our charity has been uncertain.” The loan would, he said, “help us to cover our losses this year, after using all our reserves, and the further losses we expect to face in 2021”. The Bridge Theatre in London, which was one of the first to begin staging plays for socially distanced audiences, will get a £5m loan. As well as loans, £60m is also being announced for capital projects including £21m to Manchester city council to enable completion of the Factory – a cultural space being built at the former Granada TV studios. So far more than £1bn has been allocated from the cultural recovery fund. More details of £300m in grants and £100m in loans will be announced in due course, the government said.